World Impact was birthed out of the rubble of the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles, when Keith Phillips made a deal with six boys who attended that initial Bible club: he promised to tell them about Jesus if they would tell him about life in the city.

The next week, when Keith returned to Watts, 25 young boys were waiting for Bible club! Within six weeks, 100 youngsters had joined the Bible club. Keith called a meeting and told the children that no one else could join until someone dropped out. He soon recognized the scope of this evangelistic opportunity and knew he needed help to take advantage of it.

In 1971, World Impact was birthed as an urban missions organization. Over forty years later, World Impact missionaries are still making friends in the city—sharing the love of Jesus as they go. How we love our neighbors has changed over the years. God guided us through four distinct seasons of ministry, each built on and complemented by the previous phase: Evangelism > Discipleship > Compassion Ministries > Church Planting

In 2012, Dr. Phillips retired from World Impact and Efrem Smith was named the new President and CEO of World Impact in October 2013. With Efrem's leadership, World Impact is beginning a new chapter of our history. Learn more about our new plan of holistic ministry here.

World Impact has three regional ministry hub cities: Los Angeles, CA, Wichita, KS and Newark, NJ. From these cities, oversight is given to ministry throughout the whole region (see the image above).